Zahira Imaginaria Poetry Publishing

If all our mindless twines inside
Might tangle lines of light
It’s not my job to get those knots undone

Do not bend or fold or they will break you
Perhaps they’ve gotten to you too,
I know now, I was too late
There isn’t any time left to investigate

So ditch plan B and draft your own resolve
It’s all up to you just what this could involve,
Cuz maybe when your peeps get called all units respond
but my heartstrings are bound as Samurai immortal bond
Living larger than a secret agents’ double life I was a fucking fool to use the word wife
But you know I carry the lock and you know I can turn that key
and you’re the only one I want by my side leaving carnage in a wake behind me.

1 BacheloretteSingular in purpose it could have been presumed,
she scrubbed only floors on her knees
and she ran her own fibers into string.
Tedious work in which she was consumed,
seeing to other people’s needs;
but each new daybreak, could fortune bring.

2 Breaking Out
September brought knowledge and books to mind,
she whittled shoes from old planks
to make sandals in style of the bards.
While she listened to tunes and learned how to bind,
imagining climbing the ranks,
she befriended all of the guards.

3 Culinary Art
Vague was in vogue but seasonings couldn’t be dull;
for, to taste was the textbook preparation,
epidemics of flavors to blend.
Admiral, guest of honor with his belly full;
his lips parted only for salvation,
occasion for champagne at shepherd’s end.

4 Career Organism
Collecting in the ledger was every scheme
she’d authored: her own, but no other’s lives;
maintaining separation, encoded.
Verified through lenses, she surrendered her dream
to anyone who’d falter before her, to scrutinize;
to keep her code of conduct devoted.

5 Appalled
“Reality is the rudest of mistresses,” she oft said,
yet she’d bow her head to the men who collapsed
into husks before her feet.
“No harm is meant, don’t die; just play dead,”
an instruction to them whose sanity lapsed
when they knew not a heartbeat.

6 Articulation
Lessons in speaking outside of tongues,
climbing from outcast to caste hardly known:
shared in crowns of wax stamps.
Letterhead earned, ascending the rungs,
a magnet of envy sucking fame from what sown,
taking liberties to revise under lamps.

7 Disappearing Act
Stepping back to stare through a glass,
immune to any mirror bartered,
she chose silence to ready her fire.
None knew which tests she passed or failed in class,
refusing by all means to be martyred,
disarming all devices with her mire.

8 Minimum Wager
If thought was a sin, she timed herself a plea
so with the hourglass upended,
nobody would stifle her plans.
No gamble could be made with this squalor sea
but desperate men descended,
thoughtlessly casting dice from their hands.

9 Executive
In her ends, no language could deny her sovreignty-
a sea that can’t be bothered,
in threat of tsunami to be crashed through firmament.
No siren can lament like any other with dignity,
knowing what to deny of what offered;
overcoming anguish is one’s own chosen sacrament.

1 Bachelor
Seeing through her eyes but blinded by time,
illustrious echoes salted the edge of the urns
he filled with the departed.
Poured from gourds, his oils mended each crime,
tending the fickle and flamboyant burns
with liqueurs; brokenhearted.

2 Picking Up The Peace
Knives sharpened, never dining on fleshed out lies,
the tastes of the table never waned for his arts,
and they fell to slumber for his beckon.
At supper, when he spoke, he had all their eyes;
his words, enchanting venom-less darts,
weighted with meaning from each lesson.

3 Convection
Mess hall was like any other promenade,
and, for leavened bread, we filled our guts
with a serenade before the feast day.
Her ovens shined as an immaculate facade
for the butcher’s endearing cuts
as they prepared to put on the new play.

4 Prisonary Variances
Nobody could argue or pick a fight
with the kettle on and the cauldron fulfilled,
with the ladies in their ballgowns.
Yet the men of the fold staged the light,
crushing embers with equations on quadrille,
moving toward checkmate while enveloped in sounds.

5 Grovelling
Sutures came loose from the back of her skirts,
and only the scribes would make notes
of who stepped on the yarns and pulled the twine.
Without the evidence of commit he diverts,
so that when unraveled, they’d be back to their boats,
and he’d be the only one there to bring her wine.

6 Gestation
With a semester ahead, he measured the months,
so that six could be lived out as seasons
to properly till the soils in their plots.
In care for the land with a watch on all fronts,
he mended the wounds with solace and reasons
for his selectmen to stay guard at the lots.

7 Training Period
Censure, the new sensation with words in the ducts,
they led themselves to drink from the moat
when they were desperate.
Breaking out of illnesses and blights at the crux
of disease spewed from the throat,
few could survive on their merit.

8 Paid Vacation
Having taken up armaments in riches and moods,
the suits walked about at their leisure
that they may earn their own tenements.
Lacking exits, they surrendered their broods
to the wolves without forfeit to seizure,
complacently embalmed to the elements.

9 Organization
Blind leading through the ditches,
we stumble more often than not,
leaving evidence of our success on the leaves.
But the King’s got an outhouse for the witches,
and the sewers can’t be bought
so he draws the curtains she weaves.

[On]
Oh, how I mourn for our love and longing, singing alone and facing the wind,
I can’t help but loathe the cruelty that separates me from
sinners and saints, I hold back the reigns and I cry out in pain,
In eulogy I sing for you.

Standing at my rock ashore abreast the wind, I pray;
In song I shriek so loud, the sailors plummet even miles away.

I haven’t the courage to beg Zeus’ mercy, I haven’t the time to whittle away
when my song is my sweetest poison and my dread has piled up in the tide today.

[Tw]
Pain’s the remedy to the injury when you cannot even feel,
All that one could help to find when separate from the mortal mind;
Why is it that loves like us are trapped within this dominion?
In solitude I cry for two.

Atop the highest peak of suffering, I howl to the moon;
To bear our agony to the wind, to pray the weather may change soon.

[Th]
I’ve scaled the craggy pinnacles to look upon the plain abroad
How did you ever see me first? This puzzle one day we will solve,
Lest I pain myself in lament that this browbeaten path is starved for blood;
I tie three knots to present my truth.

We still ascend another peak, from suffering’s descent;
Achieving all with this aim to release these venoms so potent.

Only in glimpses did we ever see, each other or the letters sent;
Courage is all we could craft from these signs to the eyes we’ve been lent.

[Fo]
You’ve sailed the shattered spectacles of the rippled glassy tides,
To learn the way of man you made no mistake to learn the way by heart,
As any creature taken aback you had to take in turn,
And my longings surge in tide soon.

The rough path deeply ingrained in our blood, the reward so great
To live on this strong, in translation we finally acquaint.

Sworn to go our separate ways until the fine day of future’s late
Promised in full to birthrights and sworn to secrecy in fate.